Featured Interview With Vivian Wolkoff
Tell us a little about yourself. Where were you raised? Where do you live now?
I was born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. I lived in Rio and Toronto. I have traveled some… but not nearly enough. I want to see more of the world, meet new people, and find new stories to inspire me.
I’ve always been in love with words… even before I learned how to read or write. I remember being a little girl and sneaking out of bed to pick up my favorite book (Rapunzel, by the way) and tracing the words. I remember, very clearly, I wanted to learn what each letter meant and how I could put them together for myself.
Once I learned how to read and write, there was no stopping me.
At what age did you realize your fascination with books? When did you start writing?
When I was a little girl, I loved making up stories. My family has some great storytellers and I wanted to be like them. I don’t remember when I started telling stories. I just remember I started doing it, too. My dolls were always living adventures in distants corners of the world or were CEOs knee-deep in intrigue or they were saving worlds using magic or piloting spaceships. I used to tell myself stories all the time – and I’m still telling them.
Who are your favorite authors to read? What is your favorite genre to read. Who Inspires you in your writings?
Oh, how long do you have? Because I could keep going all day.
I’ll read anything – which might explain why I genre hop so much when I write! I love Neil Gaiman, Edgar Allan Poe, and Jane Austen. I recently discovered Patricia Briggs and I’m reading her Mercy Thompson series and the Alpha &Omega series, too. I love The Night Circus, by Erin Morgenstern. I also draw inspiration from films. I majored in Film. It’s a big part of my life. I love Hitchcock and Billy Wilder. To bring things to here and now, I love Christopher Nolan’s work, as well as Guillermo Del Toro’s.
Tell us a little about your latest book?
My latest work, which comes out 01/15/2015, is Blood Red: The Complete First Season. It’s a serial. You can either read episodes one at a time or you can binge-read the whole season at once.
I love Fantasy – especially Urban Fantasy. Mostly, I always looked to TV and film to feed my Urban Fantasy fix. I used to be a huge True Blood fan. I wanted to find something like that in book form. I wanted a solid cast of characters with interesting plots – with a big serving of steam and action (of all kinds) on the side.
Like most writers, when I can’t find what I want to read, I write it.
Some writers are using serialized fiction for ebooks like popular writers used to write “paperbacks” back in the day: one single story broken into several smaller parts. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to follow the lead of other writers, who are using serials as something like TV series in book format. I wanted a complex story. And I wanted meaty conflicts and characters for my story.
By the way, the first episode is free right now on Amazon, at http://amzn.to/1Hq3SAb! The link for the “Complete First Season of Blood Red is below!
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